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Wednesday, 1 August 2018

Echoes of time past

Once again the theme for this quarter has been both challenging and inspiring. Of course, once again too I took ages to decide upon my eventual project!

The quilt, which I am calling "Echoes of time past" was inspired by the spiral art of the early Celts and also this stunning example of an early Celtic Cross at Kildalton on the island of Islay off the West Coast of Scotland.

I used an old grey shirt of my son's as the base of the main quilt and stitched on to it

a couple of pieces of this lace. (top of the quilt)

then I tore off a couple of pieces of scrim and attached them to the lower part of the quilt.

Next I ripped off some pieces of horticultural fleece and attached them to the quilt. When ironed the horticultural fleece wrinkled and tore, which was exactly what I intended it to do. It makes a change from that happening when I really don't want it to :)

Then I painted over the quilt top with acrylic paints mixed to an old stone grey colour and left them to dry. I now had the weathered stone base of my Celtic Cross depiction, next up was to back the quilt base with a length of grey felt and then add the Celtic imagery.

First up I stitched a Triskele, or Triple Spiral, motif on the main body of the quilt.

Then I created a length of machine wrapped cord with several variegated threads and couched it on to a plain grey quilt sandwich then added it to the main quilt.

I traced another triple Celtic spiral pattern on to some tear away stabiliser and hand embroidered through it on to the circle of grey marled felt to create another symbol for the quilt. The embroidery used a variegated linen thread to depict the rusting and ageing of the piece through time. The embroidered felt was backed with another piece of the same felt and stitched on to the main quilt.

Finally I quilted concentric semi-circles on to a quilt sandwich and blanket stitched around the outer edge before blanket stitching the semi-circle to the quilt base.

I moved out of so many comfort zones with this piece and to my surprise thoroughly enjoyed putting it all together.

In this book which I referred to often, but never quite got the hang of the maths, the author talks about it being possible to "skirt around the outside of a Triple Spiral and return to the exit without having traversed the inner circuit. The (resulting) short cut would only partially cover the course. If we read this as a metaphor for a human life, such a route would miss the core experience, and leave the unwary traveller none the wiser."

I have to admit that in the past I have often been guilty of skirting around the outside of projects but, thanks in a large part to the challenges thrown up by this group, I am now trying very hard to immerse myself in the process and make sure that I do not miss any of the experiences available.

I look forward to seeing how my fellow Endeavourers have risen to this challenge!

This is a stunning piece, Fiona. I love the way you have taken a disparate and unlikely collection of materials and transformed them beyond recognition to get the aged stone effect. And your spirals are amazing. All these techniques really come together with spectacular effect :)

Loved this! I am traveling to Dublin next month, so have been researching the Book Of Kells, and reading all about the designs in Ireland, so this quilt naturally caught my interest. Thank you for explaining how you accomplished all that you wanted to, and pulled in the design elements to create your piece. I'll be thinking of this while walking in Dublin!Elizabeth, of OPQuilt.com

I was interested in learning how you created this piece. As I was reading the commentary I thought "wow, she knows a lot about fabric and color and manipulating them to do what she wants it to do". Then I read that you were out of your comfort zone and my jaw dropped. I virtually hugged you. It is an amazing piece.xx, Carol

I admire anything Celtic, I don't know why but it always touches my heart. And then almost saddens me, forit always takes me back to an ara gone by. And this is no exception. Thanks for your interpratation.

The intricacy of Celtic designs always blows me away, to be able to achieve the level of detail with the tools they had available at the time is mind boggling to me :) I can only hope to pay a (very) small homage to those dedicated craftsmen.